To optimise real-time performance, Unreal Engine employs a number of tricks under the hood to make drawing images as fast as possible. One such trick is to replace objects on screen with lower-resolution versions as they are drawn further away from the camera. Those are called LODs (Levels of Detail) and although they’re great when you’re playing a game, they ruin a cinematic render time and time again.
Reflections aside, take a look at this comparison and shudder at the missing foliage in the distance.
![](https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Default-LOD.jpg)
![](https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Force-LOD0.jpg)
Thankfully there’s an easy way to force Unreal Engine to use the highest LOD at render time by supplying a console variable:
foliage.ForceLOD = 0
We can add this to Movie Render Queue with the Console Variable option like this:
![](https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-09-at-09.30.16.png)
The big advantage of using the above is that UE will auto-complete any of the variables we want to use.
Apparently there’s also a way to add this directly as a sequencer track to have changes take effect as we animate, but I haven’t tried this out yet. Word on the street is we use a Console Vairable track for this, then right-click and use the Properties to add values (sadly without auto completion).
![](https://www.versluis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-09-at-09.55.58-800x283.png)